The painting is an artistic interpretation inspired by the “Nuestra Senora de Atocha”, a Spanish treasure galleon that sank two days after leaving port at Havana in 1622. It had on board roughly 40 tons of gold, silver, jewelry & 32kgs of emeralds, which had been seized by the Spanish from the native south & central American tribes, Mayan, Inca, Aztec & others from their temples and treasuries. The treasures were converted to bullion & Catholic artifacts to be sent to Spain to fund a war.
The ancient deities of the region were angry that their treasures were stolen and leaving their homeland and thus, the Mayan god, “Huracan”, intervened & sank the galleons of the treasure fleet, which of course included “Nuestra Senora de Atocha”, which was carrying the majority of the treasure, & it’s most valuable.
Many attempts were made since then to recover the treasure with confrontations of many fatal consequences & legal battles. The majority of the ship & its artifacts were discovered in 1985 by American treasure hunter, Mel Fisher after a vast intensive searching the sea bed for “Nuestra Senora de Atocha” for sixteen & half years which was followed by another eight years of litigation in the U.S. supreme court for Fisher to claim legal rights for all the treasures found to date by his team from the sunken vessel. However, the most valuable artifacts are yet to be found.
